Development – Articles, images, inspiration

MulvannyG2 imagines a shopping mall of the future - Several years ago I flew to Los Angeles to report for the New York Times on a competition called “Dead Malls”. This wasn’t a competition for an actual brick-and-mortar commission, but instead what is sometimes called an “ideas competition”.The idea behind that... Read more »

In the Travel section of last Sunday's New York Times, writer Gisela Williams takes a look at the HafenCity district in Hamburg, Germany. What she found there got me thinking about Portland's South Waterfront district. HafenCity is a new district at the site of Hamburg's central harbor... Read more »

A-cero projected this unique house in Avila using stone, tile and wood in its construction.Here is the project description:A dwelling of generous proportions developed over a single storey to facilitate the indoor-outdoor connection and to make the most of the environment in which it... Read more »

Recently I wrote about visiting an exhibition of architecture student projects from a University of Oregon called "Experiential Harmony" taught by Kevin Valk and John Holmes of Holst Architecture. During that same visit, the work of another class, taught by Gerald Gast Ghast... Read more »

A couple times a year, architecture students at local schools like PSU and U of O give the public the chance to view their enlightened daydreaming, through open studio exhibits like the one I attended last week for Kevin Valk and John Holmes' class, "Experiential Harmony".What... Read more »

Oregonian columnist Steve Duin reports today that Brad Malsin's Beam Development may be in the running to eventually kick-start the moribund Burnside Bridgehead project.
Beam, as you may remember, was recommended back in 2005 by an advisory group to the Portland Development... Read more »

On numerous occasions over the years, I’ve seen bid teams treat the insurance and performance security clauses in a contract as a “checkbox”—not recognizing that a broad range of risks are transferred into these policies.In several instances, the bid teams were struggling to manage a... Read more »

This graph illustrates that the cost of correcting defects in design and specifications can quickly escalate if not mitigated early in a project.For building product manufacturers, this suggests the benefits of having a proactive sales force during a project's design phase, and of... Read more »

Charles Dickens had it right: this is the worst of times, but also the best of times. The effects of the current economic crisis have been sudden, broad and deep. Construction financing is as scarce as hens’ teeth, and many projects have been put on hold or cancelled outright as a... Read more »